Why is it a felony to have sex in prison? America arrests more people than any other country for the most bullshiat of reasons, then makes it an environment where realhardcore felons can get aids and rape people who shouldn't even be in prison, spreading both disease and suffering everywhere.

farkin' horrific. What they should do is segregate prisoners with AIDS, Hep, etc into a quarantine ward first off, offer condoms secondly, and allow fraternization between male and female prisoners in for non-violent offenses of a minor nature.

Also, a shiat ton of money coukd be saved if we dialed back sentencing to 1900s things. 14 days' hard labor is better for everyone than multiple months to a year for a misdemeanor.

"It's a felony for prisoners to have sex while they're in prison, so I don't think it's good government for the state to encourage inmates to break the law," said Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue of Marysville.

I love the bureaucratic mind, don't you? Better to follow the letter of the law and risk increased spread of HIV both in and out of the prison than to modify it any. These are the same minds which came up with the poorly designed sexual offender laws and never went back to correct them, even after they threw kids as young as 6 out of school as sex offenders.

You could feed them all antidepressants. The Drug companies claim that only about 1 to 5% of users suffer sexual dysfunction. Therapists and patients know that it's actually 90%.

They used to put salt-peter in the food (potassium nitrate) to knock down the sexual urges of the prisoners. I don't know how well that worked or when they stopped it.

Of course, they could stop throwing everyone in jail for pi$$ arse little charges, like having a few pot seeds on them or a roach in the ashtray of their car or any number of minor crimes that the government, in the last 30 years, had made into felonies. (If you have a cable TV connection not connected and find you can 'connect' it by poking the wire loosely in the socket attached to your home, that is a felony. You're stealing cable. The cable companies pushed to get it made from a misdemeanor to a felony and the well paid off congressmen obliged.)

The way to prevent it? Cut the cable at the pole. Don't just unscrew the wire at the house and cut the end off.

Since we have more prisoners in the USA than nearly any other nation in the world, you'd think someone might have the brains to stop arresting everyone for nearly everything.

I think Russia is the only nation that has more. They don't spend billions on prisons either. Not too many isolation cells there and prisoners mainly work to support the prisons. Plus, the guards are armed, often accompanied by attack dogs and think nothing of bashing mouthy prisoners around.

In the US, guards have to be careful not to offend gangs who mainly run prisons. Being unarmed but for mace, a guard can be killed or maimed easily.

That's why Russian mobsters are showing up in the US. When arrested, going to prison for them is like going on a luxury vacation here.

Decrease the massive over crowding in the prisons, release non-violent offenders and/or put them on parole, stop arresting every stoner who reeks of pot and the incidents of sex in jail will decrease dramatically. Inmate violence will decrease dramatically also when they're not packed like sardines in cells.

The crowding in some prisons is so bad that some inmates act out just to get thrown into solitary for a little peace.

Spouses and domestic partners are allowed to bring as many as 10 on overnight family visits with lower-level offenders who qualify for the incentive program, said corrections department spokeswoman Terry Thornton. But the condoms must be accounted for

Look, if I can't make jokes about the horrific culture of rape in US penitentiaries and their contribution to the proliferation of STDs and mental illness in our nation then I don't know what it means to be an American anymore.

coco ebert:Why is consensual sex in prison a felony, or even illegal at all for that matter.

Not an expert, but my common-sense guess is that it's the same reason guards can't have sex with prisoners: a prisoner isn't really in a position to give free and willing consent. Even if they sign a contract with witnesses saying "yeah PMITA please," there's no way of knowing if they're being coerced behind the scenes.

The radical price drop and technological advances in video monitoring would make it a realistic option to keep an eye on all the cells for the most part, but I think the mandates to reduce prison rape are unfunded, so given a choice between spending $0 to do nothing or spending $30k wiring a surveillance system around the prison, $0 is going to win.

doglover:Why is it a felony to have sex in prison? America arrests more people than any other country for the most bullshiat of reasons, then makes it an environment where realhardcore felons can get aids and rape people who shouldn't even be in prison, spreading both disease and suffering everywhere.

farkin' horrific. What they should do is segregate prisoners with AIDS, Hep, etc into a quarantine ward first off, offer condoms secondly, and allow fraternization between male and female prisoners in for non-violent offenses of a minor nature.

Also, a shiat ton of money coukd be saved if we dialed back sentencing to 1900s things. 14 days' hard labor is better for everyone than multiple months to a year for a misdemeanor.

however - prison for profit (private) would lose profit(rumor - primary advocates for tuffer sentencing are the owners of private prisons and the prison worker unions)and we cannot have that

bindlestiff2600:doglover: Why is it a felony to have sex in prison? America arrests more people than any other country for the most bullshiat of reasons, then makes it an environment where realhardcore felons can get aids and rape people who shouldn't even be in prison, spreading both disease and suffering everywhere.

farkin' horrific. What they should do is segregate prisoners with AIDS, Hep, etc into a quarantine ward first off, offer condoms secondly, and allow fraternization between male and female prisoners in for non-violent offenses of a minor nature.

Also, a shiat ton of money coukd be saved if we dialed back sentencing to 1900s things. 14 days' hard labor is better for everyone than multiple months to a year for a misdemeanor.

however - prison for profit (private) would lose profit(rumor - primary advocates for tuffer sentencing are the owners of private prisons and the prison worker unions)and we cannot have that

I'm not saying we should set up a kangaroo court run by citizens for citizens and behead all the proponents and owners of private prisons, but in the unlikely event that did happen I'm fairly certain history would only be critical of the methods, not the outcome.

T Baggins:coco ebert: Why is consensual sex in prison a felony, or even illegal at all for that matter.

Not an expert, but my common-sense guess is that it's the same reason guards can't have sex with prisoners: a prisoner isn't really in a position to give free and willing consent. Even if they sign a contract with witnesses saying "yeah PMITA please," there's no way of knowing if they're being coerced behind the scenes.

The radical price drop and technological advances in video monitoring would make it a realistic option to keep an eye on all the cells for the most part, but I think the mandates to reduce prison rape are unfunded, so given a choice between spending $0 to do nothing or spending $30k wiring a surveillance system around the prison, $0 is going to win.

I understand making it illegal for a prisoner to have sex with a guard- after all, there is a power differential there. But it would seem to me that making sex illegal between prisoners is different, but I guess I see how grey an area it could be. Still, I don't see why they would make it a felony- they're just further criminalizing the actions of an already marginalized population.

doglover:Why is it a felony to have sex in prison? America arrests more people than any other country for the most bullshiat of reasons, then makes it an environment where realhardcore felons can get aids and rape people who shouldn't even be in prison, spreading both disease and suffering everywhere.

farkin' horrific. What they should do is segregate prisoners with AIDS, Hep, etc into a quarantine ward first off, offer condoms secondly, and allow fraternization between male and female prisoners in for non-violent offenses of a minor nature.

Also, a shiat ton of money coukd be saved if we dialed back sentencing to 1900s things. 14 days' hard labor is better for everyone than multiple months to a year for a misdemeanor.

yeah but then republican dicks don't make $50000 a person a year to keep them in a privately run prison.

FTFA:On a lower-level, condoms have been available to jail inmates in San Francisco since 1989 and in Los Angeles County since 2001. Jails in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., also distribute them.

My father was a C.O. at our Maximum Security Prison here in MA (It was called Walpole State Prison back then, now it's call ACI Plymouth). When inmates would through disgusting things at the guards (everything from shiat and piss to vomit and semen), the offender was immediately placed into isolation and charges were filed. That was the official policy... The unofficial policy was to blast Country and Western Music into the cell block all day as collective punishment.

'Course, that's the cleaned up version coming from my dad... I can only imagine what happened to the offending inmate when/if there was no one looking.

If the law is going to be broken, no matter how well you enforce it, then there's a few things going on.

1) The law is busted. If nobody follows the law, it is much like making a law regulating the tides, or the rising and setting of the sun. Saying "We need to enforce it more!" doesn't fix the fact the law, itself, doesn't work.

2) Enforcement of a busted law (see above), and proclaiming such, undermine respect and authority of other laws, regardless of their validity. If an authority figure demands that the army enforce the law he made against the tides going in and out, they might not follow his orders for more simple things, like patrols.

So... why do it?

3) It feeds the ego that someone is DOING SOMETHING to solve a problem. It doesn't matter that the problem only exists in their heads. But, in addition to that, there is often also...

4) It is meant to punish a specific class of people, in this case prisoners, to 'legally' give additional punishments above and beyond what their original crimes were.

All told, this is a bad law, and our local Republicans should feel bad for trying to defend it.

If they're going to fark, and it has been demonstrated they're going to do so without regard for the rules, then make certain they at least fark safely.

But that line of logic leads to effective sex ed for kids and the giving of condoms and other preventives to teens, so we can't have that.

/Every day I get more ashamed I called myself an American Conservative, even for a short period of time, and supported these fudgetards.

coco ebertWhy is consensual sex in prison a felony, or even illegal at all for that matter.

My guess:1. Single-sex prisons = it's icky2. It could reduce the number of reported prison rapes because the victims might (think they) get into legal trouble without having proof that it was non-consensual (a bit like the religious approach of shutting up victims by threatening to stone them or to force them to marry the rapist)

The Voice of Doom:coco ebertWhy is consensual sex in prison a felony, or even illegal at all for that matter.

My guess:1. Single-sex prisons = it's icky2. It could reduce the number of reported prison rapes because the victims might (think they) get into legal trouble without having proof that it was non-consensual (a bit like the religious approach of shutting up victims by threatening to stone them or to force them to marry the rapist)

male male "sex" is not even sex. it's just playing. and no one gets hurt

The Voice of Doom:coco ebertWhy is consensual sex in prison a felony, or even illegal at all for that matter.

My guess:1. Single-sex prisons = it's icky2. It could reduce the number of reported prison rapes because the victims might (think they) get into legal trouble without having proof that it was non-consensual (a bit like the religious approach of shutting up victims by threatening to stone them or to force them to marry the rapist)

Eh, it's not a very creative solution. I thought it would be something more along the lines of adding more security cameras and microphones to make it harder to avoid being seen - then connecting them all to a web server and charging the public for access.

This is great... next up CA will use the possession of condoms among prisoners as evidence of the "intent to commit a felony" just like NY used the possession of condoms among women on the street as evidence of prostitution.

Lady J:I can't imagine anyone is holdin off from rapin because they're HIV positive and they might pass it to someone else, so handing our condoms isnt going to make the problem of coerced sex any worse

Make prison's co-ed, and see how many women suddenly magically care about the issue of prison rape.

jpadc:This is great... next up CA will use the possession of condoms among prisoners as evidence of the "intent to commit a felony" just like NY used the possession of condoms among women on the street as evidence of prostitution.

/sadly not a sarcastic comment

yeahcause men are supposed to supply the condoms not women. they SHOULD be arrested. any woman that buys a condom should be put in jail